Elizabeth
Berrien · World Class Wire Sculpture and Illustration
· (707)445-4931 · HOW LONG DID THAT TAKE YOU?

"HOW LONG DID THAT TAKE YOU?"
Discarding
the Concept of Hourly Wages
One universal pleasure of artists and craftspeople is showing off one's
work to an appreciative viewer who makes educated observations on the
more subtle detail... and starts thinking out loud about taking a
creation home to live with. While we all enjoy expostulating at length
on most aspects of the finished work, the innocent or not-so-innocent
question most likely to jam the circuits & puncture the mood
is: "So how much time do you figure you put into this?"

After all these years, that question can still throw me off guard. When
the work in question is the happy result of an inspirational jam
session, if I say, "I did it in one insanely intense session last
week", the answer may be "Well gee. Five hundred dollars for eight
hours work means you wanna make $60+ an hour. Do you expect me to think
you're really worth that much?"

Artists tend to find themselves abruptly on the defensive about now. If
the Time Question has been delivered in a friendly mood of curiosity on
the technical side of your work, great. But if your Inquisitor seems to
be a) asking you to define and justify an hourly wage, and/or b)
expecting you to discount your asking price on this basis rather than
the worth of the artwork, you're going to need an answer that sets
things in proper perspective.

You might reply, "Perhaps I should mention that this particular workday
was seventeen hours long". Don the Blacksmith's pet response is,
"Fifteen years so far, and I'm still counting". Judy the Potter says,
"Throwing that coffee mug took a couple minutes. But from the wedging
of the clay to the trimming of the piece, two firings and a glazing
application took a week." Hal the Photographer says, "1/250th of a
second. Next question?"

I like Hal's answer best, because it tosses the Time Question out the
window and leaves a nice void in which the client can realize that
Hal's camera and other photographic equipment didn't come cheap, that
Hal probably spent a great deal of time, expense, and trial &
error to achieve professional skills and an artistic "eye" (Hal may
take hundreds of photos in order to attain a single usable image), and
that whether Hal has his own darkroom or has someone else process his
film, it costs him plenty.

Not that time isn't a factor in the pricing of art; it's just one of
MANY factors. My own Dartboard Method of Pricing finished work is
heavily weighted toward overall quality and appearance in context with
my general body of work, which over the years has established its own
range on the open market. It's that wonderful old standard: "The Value
of an Item is That Which It Will Bring".

While there are indeed "born artists" out there who can create
professional quality works by the fourth grade, such is not the common
case. Artists have to begin somewhere; they spend years on end in the
never-ending process of mastering their technique and interpreting
their environment into art. My first few years as an artist, I gave
away most of what I made because it never occurred to me that it was
worth anything. Then for a couple years I'd spend five or six hours
making something I hoped I could sell for four or five dollars. As
years passed I became more skilled, I found myself producing better
works in less time and eventually celebrated achieving Minimum Wage! (a
parable for those who take up Art to get rich quick)

Of course, I wasn't really quite making minimum wage, as I found out at
Tax Time. At Tax Time, we sweep up all those old paid bills &
receipts and sweat it out with the adding machine to find out what we
made from sales, and how much of that the business ate. Working
artists, like other small businesses, pay rent, utilities, taxes and
licenses, the cost of materials, and a whole lot more. Only on the
evening of April 14th do they discover their actual net income for the
year before. (This mystical figure is usually high enough to make the
viewer shudder at the total tax due Uncle, yet low enough to make the
viewer quickly blot the monthly average from memory to enable
Rationalizing Yet Another Year's Artistic Pursuit.)

Which brings us to Self-Apprenticeship: there is a tendency to diminish
one's own sense of self-worth if one knows for a fact that a finished
work has far more hours in it than you can ever be paid for. After all,
even if one of your Resplendent Wombats entailed ten times the agonies
of creation as its mate, you can't expect your Admiring Public to grab
the one with an extra zero on the tag. So price them both reasonably,
and credit the excess hours to your Self-Apprenticeship and the
knowledge that you will earn more as time passes and you get better.

Avoid "clocking yourself; forcing a production timetable, you cut
corners & reduce the heart and value of your work. (Screaming
Deadlines are a major exception. Some of my best work happens during
adrenaline-packed all-nighters, when there's no time to think, just
DO). I work on several works at once, focussing on each for as long as
it holds me. Then I set it down and switch to a fresh work, or do
Research, a time-consuming but unrespected aspect of creation. Often
the research phase takes longer than physical execution. But from a
bystander's viewpoint, it's "So you're finally working! Every time I go
past your studio, you've got your head in a book!"

If someone persists in attempting to define you in terms of hourly wage
or challenges you to justify your entirely intangible Hourly Worth,
gently steer him or her to the ABC's of business overhead, murmuring
softly that one does not question the wages of brain surgeons, who also
invest heavily in time and training. In extreme cases, you may
Enlighten the Ignorant by handing them a paintbrush and inviting them
to create their own work (in the time they think you should be able to
make it in, of course...) My own answer to the How Long question?
"Damfino...I never kept track!"

ASK
AUNTIE SOCIAL

Dear Auntie Social: So what's the big difference between Art and
Crafts, anyhow?

My Child: Very well. First we expose this as the Artistic Granddaddy-O
of Rhetorical Questions (i.e. those uttered for the sake of producing
an Artificially Eloquent Effect, without any expectation of an actual
Answer). At parties, fatheads pull this one out when they've run out of
pick-up lines, and stand there smirking while artists are gulled into
mucking about for a plausible answer in which one's own medium
qualifies as Art while someone nearby is consigned to the
alleged Low Rent sector of Craft. Painters sneer at weavers, jewelers
insult photorealists. Everyone but the Fathead ends up in a prickly
mood.

Auntie Social invites you consult the Dictionary, which tells us: a)
Art is the ability to make things, whether in 2-D or 3-D, b) Craft is
some special skill, art, or dexterity, c) Craft is sometimes deemed to
differ from Art if it appears that a lesser skill and diminished
creative thought are involved.

For Auntie Social, the difference is Production: is the work in
question the unique outcome of a one-time-only effort to achieve a
certain effect, or is it a clone you can reproduce with relatively
little mental outlay once you figured it out the first time? A handful
of mud, properly shaped and baked, can get into museums as Art.
"Factory" oil paintings of Clowns, Daisies and Wide-Eyed Rottweillers
are in fact Craft. In top form, we make Art. When we do certain Bread
& Butters, it's Craft. A Craftsperson can make Art and/or
Craft. Satisfied? Write if you get work, Fathead.